Man Down Read Free Page A

swelled through the partly unzipped top of his befouled canary yellow sweat suit. A wet, gap-toothed grin fringed by a beaver fuzz of hair was visible in the mouth hole of his mask, his breath coming in gusts.
    The small man, the only one who had spoken—in a drawl that to Turner’s uneducated ear sounded vaguely Southern—was dressed all in black: Levis, Reeboks, T-shirt and windbreaker.
    He tossed the TV remote onto the couch and, spying the BlackBerry on the dining room table, said, “Whose phone is this?”
    “Mine,” Turner said, his voice unsteady.
    The man looked across at Tanya. “Where’s yours?”
    “On the counter in the kitchen.”
    He jerked his head at the fat giant.
    “Get it, Tard.”
    “Yessir, Shorty,” the monster said, his voice a phlegmy slur.
    While Tard fetched Tanya’s iPhone and shoved it into the pocket of his sweats, Shorty opened Turner’s BlackBerry, removed the battery, skimming it across the floor like a hockey puck, and then fished out the SIM card.
    He produced a lighter from his jeans and set fire to the SIM, dropping the flaming plastic rectangle into an ashtray.
    “No other phones on you?”
    “No,” Turner said.
    Tanya shook her head.
    “You won’t mind if we check will you? Just to make sure you don’t butt-dial 911?”
    While Bone frisked Turner, Tard, wheezing and giggling, ran his hands over Tanya who smacked out at him, cursing.
    When the two men came up empty Shorty said, “Be advised that your landlines have been disabled at the pole in the street.”
    Tanya tried to rise and Tard pushed her down.
    “Let her stand,” Shorty said.
    Tanya came upright, holding a hand to her bleeding cheek.
    Cautiously Turner got to his feet, his knees uncertain.
    “What the fuck do you want?” Tanya asked Shorty as blood flowed through her fingers, patterning her white cotton shirt.
    “Whoa, that’s some mouth you got on you, little lady.”
    “Just tell me. Do you want money?”
    “Money?”
    “Yes, is that what you want? Fucking money?”
    “Oh, yeah, we want money. And we want fuckin.” He laughed through his mask, getting right up in her face. “So let’s just say that there will be pillaging. And there will be rape.”

4
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    You will be redeemed by the blood.
    Bleeding, Tanya thought of those words, that fucking pronouncement or prophecy or whatever the fuck it was, and then she thought of the man—no, not a man, a boy , a fucking rancid, sleazy boy—who had said them to her and then she arrived, finally, at the realization that she’d been trying to avoid since she’d seen these animals with the guns coming into her house: she had done this.
    She had done this to herself.
    She was the author of her own destruction.
    And the destruction of her fucker of a husband, of course.
    But fuck him.
    Fuck him.
    He deserved all the shit that rained down onto on his useless, cuntstruck fucking head.
    She, who had been running from this for twenty-five years, who had fled the savagery of Africa for a country she loathed, had been stupid enough to open a door and allow in that uniquely American brand of madness—the madness so beloved of the true crime TV shows that had become her secret pleasure, watched on the computer in her office or, pathetically, on her iPad in her fat assed SUV while parked in the middle of nowhere on one of her endless drives through this bleached desert city.
    Tanya certain now that the creature she’d encountered on one of those drives on a molten afternoon a few weeks ago, after she’d left work early without apology or explanation, had brought this terror to her house.
    Tanya’s sudden departure from the private college where she was an associate professor had come after a meeting of the law faculty. Until recently the faculty head had been another South African, the person who’d got her the job and mentored her.
    But he’d returned home before Tanya had become eligible for tenure and the decision now